Love in a Blue Time by Hanif Kureishi

From the liberating, irreverence of the 1970s to the dilemmas and disillusionments of the 1990s, here is a collection of witty and wryly revealing tales of a generation--from a Pakistani girl's visit to London, which starts a revolution in her conservative home, to men and women, once carefree, careless, and usually stoned, who must grapple with responsibility, fidelity, and other complications of adult life in middle-class London.

Hanif Kureishi won England's prestigious Whitbread Prize for his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. His screenplays include Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. His other works include the novels The Black Album and Gabriel's Gift and the short story collection Love in a Blue Time. He lives in London.

Unrated Critic Reviews for Love in a Blue Time

Kirkus Reviews

Existentially uneasy, he winds up in the loo, mid-supper, with one big problem to face: ``I glance at the turd and notice little teeth in its velvet head, and a little mouth opening.'' After semi-mortal combat with this unwanted guest, he throws it out the window: ``On, on, one goes, despite ever...

Publishers Weekly

But after Bill satisfies her demands for rough sex, he leaves with the bittersweet revelation ""that happiness was beyond him and everything was coming down, and that life could not be grasped but only lived."" In the collection's longest, most cluttered story, ""With Your Tongue Down My Throat,"...

Entertainment Weekly

The '80s took their toll on these love stories' divorce-bound characters, who can't handle responsibility and sense that ''life [can] not be grasped but only lived.'' In tales that range from the tartly picaresque (''With Your Tongue Down My Throat'') to the sophomoric (''In a Blue Time''), ...

Salon

Perhaps it’s Kureishi’s affinity for pop music that gives his work it’s up-to-the-moment feel, its ability to get at the essence of an era through its fashions and attitudes that can make the work of other current British writers seem to be moldering on the shelf.